


A Cracked Sentinel

by Azpou



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Comfort, Conversations, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-25
Updated: 2002-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azpou/pseuds/Azpou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grogan talks to Jack. Spoilers for 'Last Stand' and 'The Sentinel'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cracked Sentinel

Grogan stared into his coffee. It was brown and boring. Monotonous. Not at all concerned about his mental well-being, which at that point in time suited Grogan just fine. If one more person gave him that look, he thought he might shoot himself.

It was late, and the commissary was quiet. He was glad about that, because it meant there were no whispers or sympathetic glances coming his way. The few people who were present were either science types stocking up on supplies for the night - coffee and donuts and so on - or nurses working the night shift. They were all studiously avoiding his eyes. He was beginning to realise that bad news travelled fast in the SGC, and Grogan knew he was pretty much bad news walking. Nobody wanted to talk to the survivor, so it was kind of a surprise when a shadow fell across his table.

He looked up into the face of Colonel O'Neill. Great. Just what he wanted - old Stoneface himself for company.

"Colonel," he said irritably, too pissed with life to bother standing up. Anyway, everyone knew that O'Neill was too much of a loose cannon himself to complain when the same treatment was handed out to him. O'Neill was nothing if not even-handed.

O'Neill pulled out a chair and sat down opposite, the chair legs making a scraping sound across the floor. Grogan managed to suppress the urge to flinch, but only just; loud noises didn't sit too well with him right now.

"Grogan," O'Neill said, sounding a little awkward, Grogan was surprised to note. Then again, O'Neill wasn't exactly known for cosy little chats. He watched as O'Neill began to fiddle with a sticky bottle of ketchup left over from lunch. Nope . . . definitely not a guy for giving pep talks.

Grogan was content to let the silence drift on, not at all eager to start the conversation. He didn't want to talk about his feelings, to O'Neill or Fraiser or anyone else. He just wanted to be left alone. Apart from any of the . . . stuff, he wasn't exactly great company.

"I wanted to talk to you before the debriefing," O'Neill finally said.

"Oh, yeah?" Grogan raised his coffee to his lips and took a sip. It was stone cold. "What about?"

"I think you know."

"Let's say I don't."

O'Neill smiled faintly at that, though Grogan wasn't too sure why. He didn't get O'Neill, not really. In fact, he didn't get most of the people working under Cheyenne Mountain, not yet, even though now he was technically one of them. They'd warned him before he took his assignment that SG-5 had all the worst luck. He hadn't figured on catching some of that bad luck quite so soon, but he should have known he was doomed right after they told him about Elliot.

"About the mission," O'Neill supplied, when he realised that Grogan wasn't about to talk.

"Don't you mean my team, sir? My very dead team, to be specific." The clarification tasted bitter, but there was no sense in hiding from it. Besides, Grogan wasn't in any mood to make things easier for O'Neill - nobody had made things easier for his teammates.

"I knew you were smart." O'Neill seemed unfazed by the venom, but didn't elaborate. Grogan took another mouthful of his stone cold coffee, and they both watched O'Neill's fingers dance over the ketchup bottle.

"Colonel -" Grogan eventually began, but stopped when his throat tightened uncomfortably. He swallowed with difficulty, the action loud in the near-silence of the commissary, and then looked up at the ceiling. For some reason he wasn't going to examine, he felt it necessary to avoid O'Neill's eyes.

"Grogan."

He was surprised by the softness of O'Neill's voice, and by the empathy, although he felt kind of stupid for feeling surprised. Of course O'Neill knew what it was like . . . to lose teammates and friends. Maybe more than most. You don't make colonel in Special Ops without watching people die. Maybe even killing them yourself.

"Everyone on this base has lost people they care about," O'Neill said, his voice low. "If you need to talk to someone . . . we all know. Pick anyone. You're not alone in this."

Grogan looked down from the ceiling and found O'Neill staring at him piercingly. That was weird. More weird than usual, anyway. "I know, sir," he murmured, nodding slightly. "I just -" He looked away again.

"What?"

Grogan couldn't answer for a long minute. His eyes were stinging when he hoarsely whispered, "I didn't expect it to be so hard. My team - and Elliot -" He cleared his throat self-consciously. "Guess that makes me an idiot, huh?"

O'Neill didn't insult him by denying it. "Elliot died for something bigger than all of us. So did your team. You know that."

"Do I? I thought they died getting shot at because of some snake on a power trip, but maybe that was just me."

O'Neill snorted. "With your track record, I'm surprised it wasn't you."

For one brief second Grogan felt truly sick, O'Neill's not-so-innocent joke striking nerves and raising issues he would have preferred to ignore. It was a thought he'd been avoiding all night; why them, and not him? He was the new guy, after all. They'd advised him of the survival rates for new recruits before he got involved with the training programme, so if anyone should have died, it was him.

"With respect, sir," he bit out angrily, making it clear that there was no respect involved. "Wasn't that a little tasteless?"

"Maybe," O'Neill conceded. He held Grogan's eyes for a moment, then pushed back his chair and got to his feet. Grogan understood the look on O'Neill's face; O'Neill had his own demons, and was choosing to laugh rather than cry. It was pretty black, pretty cynical laughter, but it was probably more constructive in the long run.

O'Neill's expression was slightly wistful as he reached out and patted Grogan heavily on the shoulder. "Stay angry, Lieutenant. Out there -" he waved a hand vaguely "- anger's a great motivator."

Grogan watched him leave, then looked down at the table. O'Neill had absently squirted the image of a smiling face with the ketchup. It was a slightly manic face, true, with wide eyes and wild hair, but it was smiling nonetheless.

Stay mad. He could do that.


End file.
